Tea
by Unfinishedsenten
Summary: It's a wonder he's never noticed it before. After all, they've both met on countless occasions; her with that clown, him with his many dates, the ones he loved, the ones who would always disappoint him. All those times, there she was. Perfect blonde hair, perfect smile, perfect laugh; God, she can just kill with that laugh, can't she? Harley Quinn... the perfect Alice.
1. Chapter 1 The Audition

**December 17th, 2014.**

 **12:31 P.M.**

* * *

Black tears. Mascara stains painted cake in smudges on her cheeks. A blue gown tied with loose string. White pinafore. Bloody ribbon. Ballet flats.

And blonde hair.

She stirred, moaning softly, eyes weary and bloodshot and stinging. She looked around. Then she gulped. Then she cried.

This was Alice, which was not her real name, of course, but her past meant nothing anymore. It was forgotten. Discarded. Cleansed. Sterilized. It didn't even matter. This was simply Alice.

And nothing more.

Bonded. Gagged. Afraid. Tied to an old, time-beaten Grandfather chair; the upholstery ripped to bits, revealing a bright, smooth plush of beige color underneath. She shuddered. She yelped deeply in the bottom of her throat, and it traveled all the down to her gut. She writhed and twitched her muscles, but the ropes were tight. Too tight. Especially around the abdomen, as if the bundle was some iron-clad, medieval, torture corset.

And her legs were immobile and sealed together as if by wielding, and aching numbly like a limp, flaccid tongue as they lay loosely at the floor; motionless, tired, and unable.

The cloth in her mouth was also alarmingly damp with salvia.

She saw the colorful pots and mismatched cups and glass saucers. She saw the checkered oilcloth draped over the wooden edges. She saw the chandelier, swaying gently like a pompon in a light brush of wind, haphazardly organized garnishes and the buckets of flowers and the greasy factory floor that smelled of exhaust fumes and gas leaks all beneath its dimly lit sway. She saw the shadows creep in around at her sides, the blackness engulfing everything but this extravagant display of decoration and obsession.

And then she saw **him**.

Her heart began to beat fast. Too fast; larruping against her chest with a dangerous dart of velocity. She felt like screaming.

And when Jervis jumped up on that ridiculously long table and sauntered his way down towards her seat, she did.

 _" **MMM!** "_

"Shh," he said. It's going to be ok. He spoke softly, his dirty, wind-beaten bucks clinking against the utensils on all those empty plates. "It's all going to be O.K."

 _"MMM!"_ She cried again, but her voice was faint and muffled behind the wet cloth wrapped around her jaw. _"MMNOO!"_

He continued down the oilcloth, cracking the rim of an antique Melamine plate underfoot. A pocket watch emerged from his pocket, a small glint of bright gold rising from its brass disc. The chain dangled. The hands moved. It ticked. And ticked. And ticked.

" _MMM!"_

Halfway there, he saw her petrified face and bit his lip, hard enough to draw blood but doing no such thing. He turned around, grimacing. "I'm sorry," he breathed unsteadily. "I'm so sorry, Alice."

She sniveled and her arms broke out in cold gooseflesh. Her back shuddered. She gulped.

"I didn't want it to be like this," Tetch whispered, more to himself than to her, "I really didn't. I love you! You know that, of course you do."

She said, " _please._ " She hollered, " _let me go_." She mumbled, " _I'll do anything."_ Then she shrieked, a horrific, goatish shriek that echoed silently towards the darkness around them. _"I have a family! A little girl! Oh god, please!"_

But he didn't hear her.

"You just fought so hard!" he shouted, roared, and then pulled at his hair, salt and liquid bubbling up into crude tears within his fragile eyes. His posture slumped lower as he crouched, elbows meeting knees in an awkward squatting position.

"You just . . . couldn't be content! You couldn't be happy! Happy with me!"

Alice winced. Jervis wrinkled his nose and stood in response, disgusted, angry, and sad; his reason for being so, however, considerably different than that of his cold, sweaty victim's.

And then there was a pause. A painful one; one that held fast with a patent, inexpugnable thickness; a pause that seemed to snuggle up into a bundle, right then and there, and tucked itself in for the night, naturally and seamlessly immune to any sense of respite or composure.

Jervis spun around, a tad frantically, his unbuckled belt flapping about, and he was suddenly back to his smiling, confident self.

"But I can _make_ you happy, dear," he said, wiping at his eyes and beaming. " _I can make it all better_."

She knew what was coming. She had gleaned information of his brainwashing proclivities in bits and pieces from what she either heard on the local news or read in those online news articles. And even though reports _were_ abundantly vague, and her current mind _was_ dangerously over-clouded with thoughts of despair and the linger of some bootlegged, opiate-laced narcotic, the impending diminution of her free will-the true fate that awaited her-was the first, skin-prickling dawn of realization that bobbed up to the surface of her brain as Jervis took off his top hat.

She knew she would not be able to think on her own soon. She knew, and everything, every boiling dumpling of terror and lamentation inside her, was churned over and turned inside out and then lurched up and down her stomach in this terrible, sinking fit of acid indigestion. And when her captor held that hat closer to his chest and plodded nearer towards her seat, her whole body reverberated in trembles and rivers as she let out a croak as wild and hysteric as the slowly crescendoing shrill of a madwomen banging her fists on the guardrails of her hospital bed.

" **MMMMMAAAA**!"

"I love you. I love you."

 _"MMMMMMRRRAAA!_

"Just let it go black Alice. Just fall down the rabbit hole and let it all go black."

She reared back, the Grandfather chair skidding across the linoleum with a screech.

Jervis cringed.

"You think I want this?!" he shouted. "You think I want you to be some lifeless, brain-dead puppet at my disposal? You think I'd like that?!" As he treaded forward, he grunted and kicked over a teacup and it slid nosily across the table of silverware and shattered onto the floor.

"I don't want that, Alice! I love you! I goddamn love you!"

 _"MMMMOOO!"_

She shuffled back some more until the looped, golden-colored legs of the chair thudded against something thick and sturdy and unmovable.

Until it thudded against a wall.

Jervis balled a hand into a fist and moved it against his puckered face. "Now look what you made me do," he said complacently and gently, the anger lifting away from his tongue.

"You made me swear."

He leaned in and smiled. "I don't like swearing, Alice. Never have."

Turning, he gazed off into the black reflectively for a moment, and then took a few inches behind, slowly treading away.

"So, I'm sorry dear, I didn't want you to see that side of me. But now that you have, it's all the more reason to do what must be done. To make it all go away, make it fade, to pick the drab, unpleasant little thoughts clean from your pretty little mind."

She shook her head desperately, imploringly. Drenched in perspiration, terror, hate and sorrow.

He didn't notice.

"I really do love you, Alice. I do."

" _MMM_!"

"I love you."

" ** _MMMMAAAAAAAAAAAMMM_**!"

"I love you so much."

And that was when he gave her his hat–brown and stitched, a "10/6" price tag neatly taped to its dish-shaped bond by a sash of cut-off tarpaulin. That was when the thing smoothly folded down his arm; Alice kicking and wiggling in the last few, fleeting seconds of her defiance, expecting a hot lance of pain to cut down her scalp, or maybe even an electric shock that would rewrite her brain somehow.

But the hat just slipped off his fingers, and landed onto her beautiful, blonde head without anything more than a soft thump.

The magnetic _beep_ sounded off and then her eyes contracted into pins: these small, discolored, beady black-dots. Her face deadpanned and her eyes fluttered weakly and then settled.

She looked up, emotionless.

Jervis grinned and took out the cloth from the sore, pained crevices of her lips.

 _"Now say you love me back,"_ he said.

She did.


	2. Chapter 2 Recruitment Process

**June 12, 2015.**

 **12:31 P.M.**

* * *

Spotless quarry tiles. New plaster; white, refurbished drywall. Fixed ventilation system. Hospitable atmosphere–patients grinning and laughing with their therapists through opened doorways. Patients waving and brushing their teeth and reading and shaking hands with the guards.

Arkham Asylum was better. Better than before.

And Bruce noticed as he passed down the salted-clean, stain-proof halls; like a dark, unrelenting wraith amidst an overwhelming sea of light. He furrowed his brows in suspicion. With each passing glance.

In his infinite negativity, he inspected the catches, the drawbacks, the still-existing stumbling blocks hidden in the walls, on the ceilings, and in the grates below. He searched for the missing spots, the things those construction men would have either flaked on or left behind to be finished some other day. For something, anything, that's kind of drab, kind of dank, kind of dark . . . dark like him? Yes. Something, anything, to collocate with the image in his mind, the image of the wire mesh, peeling away mental hospital that _he_ knew. The one that made sense.

The one that was familiar.

The hum of a broken fan. The creak of rusted, ruptured pipes requiring attention behind their bright, new faced. The blisters of overused paint. The soft, barely noticeable clumps of dust gathering in the corners.

That was all he could find. The four things still wrong with Arkham.

It was enough.

 _Ten girls in the last month._ Ten young, innocent girls gone missing. Poof. And their only crime? Being blonde. Being blonde and fitting whatever demented picture of Alice that Jervis had floating around like chipped glass in his sick brain, poking holes in every vortex.

Tetch was becoming unhinged. Even less organized. Erratic. And the norm? Well the norm was that he would fixate over a girl for at least a year, maybe two, maybe even three, and _then_ move on, _then_ go on to the next, _then_ find another poor soul to stalk and kidnap and murder when he eventually decided they weren't good enough for his role-play. Sure, there were always others in his little plays, but Alice was the most important, the star of the theatre. But this, this _amount_ , this inconsistency . . . this was simply him breaking apart. This was him slowly realizing that his fantasy world didn't exist, that there was no _real_ Alice, no more Wonderland to seek comfort in. This was him unraveling at the seams, Bruce was sure of it.

And he _did_ fear for what little grip Jervis had on reality when he'd eventually run out of people to obsess over.

But it was still ten girls. And that was too many. Too many that were taken and ruined and, _poof_ , dead because he wasn't fast enough. He couldn't let that happen again.

He wouldn't.

Gray, metal door with padlock. Spring hinges. Dead-bolted. Sliding latch for meal trays, if imperative. Inmate #237.

Cash thrust the keys into the lock with his good hand and something clicked.

"Are you sure about this Bats?" he asked. "What if the bastard just says no?"

"He won't," Bruce answered, guttural, serious as always; glaring dramatically at nothing.

And so Cash just shrugged and the door came ajar with a careless, hefty swing and a few seconds later, Crane stirred and hiked himself up on his elbow. Batman stepped in, a big, looming shadow backlit by the bright shine of fluorescent bulbs.

Scarecrow, or so he's called, rubbed a set of tired, groggy eyes, not quite sure if this was some cryptic dream or just boring old reality, and stared up.

"Hello?" he asked, a bit annoyed, a bit aggressive, and very much confused.

"Hello Jonathan," Batman answered lowly, calmly, and stared at his incarcerated enemy with cautious eyes. He breathed in, slightly, quickly, and balled his hands into heavy fists, as if this next part might hurt quite a bit.

And then he said, through a strained voice . . .

"I need your help."

* * *

Crane giggled.

This was just ridiculous.

"Before you . . ." he trailed off, smiled, and then resumed, "Before you begin to cajole me in that loving manner you're so well known for, Little Bat, I'm just gonna ask it; we both know I'm going to anyways. I'm just gonna skip a few steps ahead, cut right to it. Is that ok with you?"

"Fine."

"Good. Now . . ." Crane broke off, swigging down his plastic bottle of water. It hit his throat cold and went down colder; refreshing as an isotonic, as if he were just panting through rather large spate of push-ups on the ground, or running a lap around the lawn and was now flushed of all liquids.

Or at least that's how he acted in accordance to this conversation.

He exhaled with a loud " _Ahh_." He smiled again, a fleeting, nervous-looking half-smile, and then his jaw hardened. His eyes glittered with calculation. He caressed his scruffy, unshaven chin. He sighed, rubbing his temples again. And then the gears in his head started to turn.

And you could see it.

"Whatever it is that you want from me, whatever desperate measure has dragged you here, self-respect and dignity be damned. . ." He leaned in closer in his seat, clicking his teeth and cocking his head, "Why on earth would I even care?"

Bruce just stood there a second. Contemplating his answer, looking around at Jonny's shelves, at his books.

 _Principles of Chemistry. Republic. The Honest Truth About Dishonesty. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow._

Many more. All alphabetized by last name. Then some binders. Some folders. The desk next to him was mahogany. Scraped. Softened crayon scribbled over several sheets of lined, college paper. Lecture notes. Blueprints. _Formulas_.

Bruce breathed in hollowly now, disappointed and frustrated. Jonathan sighed, oblivious. He was just waiting for an answer.

So that's when Bruce stared him right in the eyes, right in his dirty, green irises, right in the thin layers of sleep still lingering in his corneas.

"It's about Jervis," he said. "He needs your help. He might be dead already, I don't know. But if he's not, he needs you. Will you listen?"

Jonathan's mouth twitched and his dimples trembled a bit. He clenched his teeth and straightened back. And then suddenly, the gears in his head stopped, the wheels clogging, slamming together with a loud, metallic clink that echoed through a deep sigh from his mouth.

There was a small beat. And then . . .

"Fine." Crane responded in a hoarse, baited voice; no longer monotonous and dripping with lethargy and mockery. No, it was more like a whisper, thick with emotion.

He adjusted his brown computer glasses by half an inch. He scratched his cheek. He put on that fake little smile.

"I'll listen," he said.


	3. Chapter 3 Investigations

She adjusted her shoulders and smiled. A comforting smile. Her honey brown hair shining like her thin, red lips. Big logos and mounted LCD screens and sectioned cubicles out in the distance.

Shuffle of paper and then . . .

She speaks.

 _"Good evening, Gothamites. I'm Brittany Colvin and here's what making news at 11."_

This was the local news. Gotham's news. A respiratory for tragedy, broken dreams, and new, domestic design initiatives to rebuild the city and start from the ground-up, which never really panned all the way out.

The anchor transitioned, broadcasting across the city. And as she began, she wore not a smile, but more of a frown.

 _"A man was found dead in a bathtub at the Sunrise Bay Hotel in Burnley this afternoon. Officers believe he may have worked there as an employee, although they have not yet identified the victim's name or age, due to the gruesome state of the deceased at the scene of the crime."_

* * *

A caster rolls down a long stretch of textured, patterned carpet. It squeaks with each rotation, a loose screw. We hear plates chiming and rattling about nearby. Black loafers tut close behind.

 _"However, the authorities have pinpointed their primary suspect-."_

The caster stops. And now we pan up to see a young man with smooth, gelled, blonde hair and a small goatee and a friendly face. He's wearing a velvet blazer with a white undershirt and a black bowtie. There's a cart of food in front of him.

He knocks on the door beside him.

"Room service!" he calls out, looks down, hands akimbo, and waits. Nothing. He calls out again, growing impatient.

"Hey man!" he hollers. "Your food's here!"

Then the door opens. A bulky, hooded figure steps forward, shrouded in the black, deep hollowness of his room.

The figure inhales. The figure snarls. The figure grins.

"It sure is," the figure says.

 _"One Waylon Jones."_

And before the man can react, before he can sprint, a mangy, green hand reaches out, its scutes and scales bouncing off the light above, and violently grasps his collar. The young man screams. The figure laughs deeply; almost a growl.

And in seconds . . . all that's left in the hallway is the cart.

 _"Also known as Killer Croc."_

* * *

Jervis shuffles through the collection on his desk, listening. There's a swath of profiles, mugshots, dossiers; of each villain in Gotham. Each politician, attorney, innovator, celebrity, and superhero.

Then he finds Croc's picture and picks it up, timidly but cheerfully, hands trembling. The blue, grainy glow of his laptop illuminates his face; his deranged, unshaven, sleep-deprived face. And from the computer's screen, the anchor sadly informs her attentive audience that Mr. Jones's whereabouts are still unknown. That he had left the hotel shortly after his dinner; and that this merciless, carnivorous, hungry nightmare of a man is now loose on their streets. Probably in the sewers, waiting below in green waters until he decides where to go eat next.

Tetch struts over to the bulletin in the corner of the darkened room and pins the animal's picture to the board.

He gauges it. He giggles. He nods.

And then he takes out a sharpie and uncaps it. Above Waylon Jones's photographed, angry sneer he simply writes the word:

 **Jabberwocky.**

* * *

 _"_ _In other news, a famous, antique painting crafted by late 16th-century Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo was recently pilfered today from the Otisburg Art Gallery in North Gotham._ _"_

In the middle of a bright, pristine room (with a parquet floor and a diverse assortment of flowery portraits and drawings covering the white walls), a trope of confused police officers walk around, aimlessly rubbing their heads. To their left, a very upset curator holds her arms tightly over her chest and seethes in both shock and anger.

And then we see a forensic scientist swabbing the corners of one of the walls with a fiber duster, a puzzled look on his face.

 _"Although all signs point to our notorious burglar **Catwoman** as the culprit, the research team has still yet to find any incriminating evidence against her. If she was there, it seems our feline friend simply disappeared after taking the painting for herself." _

* * *

Selina scoffs as she sips her coffee in her small, quaint apartment quarters. She's wearing a robe, sitting on the couch, watching. There's a canvas-wrapped, rectangular-shaped object at her feet.

Oddly enough.

Bruce Wayne, her beautiful, exotic, mysterious Abyssinian, jumps up on the cushions and purrs softly. She strokes it. She smiles. She drinks.

"Good luck boys," she says. And then she smirks.

* * *

Jervis hurries and culls her face from the motley pile in front of him. He tacks it beside the last. Tilts the flap into position. And above it he writes:

 **Cheshire**.

* * *

The screen on the laptop changes and a camera lens catches a busy, pantsuit-wearing woman in her mid-30s rushing down a set of concrete steps, a briefcase swinging down by her side. Gotham's East Courtroom is behind her; those big, marble pilasters fading into the distance.

 _"In a recent press conference with the Gotham Gazette, councilwoman Alex Shelby has confirmed, by popular demand, that she will indeed be running for mayor come this fall."_

Alex Shelby makes her way into the parking lot and flips her short, red hair in the rushing wind. She walks closer to her car. She unlocks it. She starts to get in . . . and then she's ambushed. A flood of reporters surging in from nowhere. Crowding her. Snapping, clicking pictures of her surprised face as if this were some high-school prank.

They wave and shout and greet her.

And she just smiles gently and greets them and waves back.

 _"When asked about her change of heart, she had this to say:"_

"Well I just remembered thinking," she responds, now in front of a microphone, still smiling, looking prepared and approachable, "Thinking about the people of this city. Of our past of bad blood. Of corruption. Of greed. How each year, no matter how morally right or wrong our mayor is at the time, they always manage to avoid the main problem. The main issue here. With our prisons, our hospitals. And I think it just takes a woman's certain sensibility to recognize it. A queen. Not a king. A _queen;_ a queen is what Gotham needs right now _._ "

* * *

Jervis finds her. Assigns her role on the bulletin.

 **Queen.**

And moves on to the next.

* * *

 _"-homicidal maniac Victor Zsasz still at liberty. Two more casualties found in the Boweries."_

Hatter adds him. Marks him.

 _"-zealot terrorist makes bomb threat to GCPD-"_

Him too.

 _"-naked, plastered college student pees in municipal fountain and-"_

But not him, obviously.

* * *

Two hours later, he has them all decked out on the board, and his hands jitter in excitement. His eyes sweep over the bulletin restlessly. His mouth twitches.

Everyone was invited. Everyone had their parts, and their parts had them. Everything was good. Planned. Ready. Perfect.

But then he remembers. Then he remembers the missing link as he stands there in the dark, feeling cold and isolated. Then Jervis frowns, _remembers_ , and feels the white-hot, painful rage billow up inside him like smoke from a backdraft.

Everything was perfect. Except for Alice.

* * *

And so after a few intense moments where it seemed he would just flip the fuck out, Tetch decided to search. To search and search, on the verge of hysteria, on the verge of absolute ruin, rummaging through the pile on the desk over and over again until finally . . . he saw it.

Until he sighed and happily reprimanded himself for not realizing it years before; slapping his head, laughing. Until he found his perfect match, the perfect picture of the deranged, pink-and-blue, red-and-black cheerleader popping a plump ball of bubblegum in front of the camera, lips puckered out. Until he found that blonde-haired girl with cotton candy pigtails and fishnet leggings and white, pale makeup on her enthusiastic, albeit naive, face.

Until he simply found Harley Quinn.

His Alice.


	4. Chapter 4 Crane's Hesitation

They fought. It didn't make sense, but they did; fighting and bickering like an old, geriatric couple over their morning brunch; like exasperated, budding antipodes; like brothers (brothers!), one older, one younger, bouncing off each other; the older feeling woefully embarrassed by the younger's presence, but still somehow . . . caring for each other?

Was that it?

No.

As an expert on psychology, and, incidentally, the human mind itself, Crane knew the mechanics of their relationship and what drove it. He knew that, on the surface, it _appeared_ to be something as simple and prosaic as emotional ambivalence: the coexistence within an individual of positive and negative feelings towards another, simultaneously drawing him or her in equal and opposite directions. It _appeared_ to be the sort of kittenish, sibling-eqsue rivalry one would read in a teen book or catch on a rom-com; that love-hate parallel so often reserved for the gushiest of those "chick-flicks" (as his father used to disparagingly call them, understandably of course). Jonathan knew that it _appeared_ this way because weak minds couldn't possibly understand his motives, his true feelings, and his personal perspective of Jervis. And he would periodically discredit any other outside theory in his mind while in Tetch's company; easily too, with the quickest of reasonings: the mere fact that he, the **Scarecrow** , the Master of Fear, One of the Most Dangerous Rivals of the Batman(!), was quite simply . . . incapable of the emotion.

Yes, the only emotion he cared for was **horror.**

And his mind was too busy ticking away with his next big, grand project (the next stage in his plan to foil Gotham's populated, weak little civilian mind) to concern himself with such boring pseudo-aphorisms. While desperate doctors and fangirls would revel in their own, misguided diagnosis of the relationship (wrongfully calling it a form of friendship, as disgusting as that sounds) he would ponder the purest, most exhilarating chemical release any man has ever had the privilege to experience:

 **Horror.**

It all came back to horror.

* * *

"You're coming with me, Crane."

Crane giggled again, his tiny Adam's apple bobbing up and down in his pale throat. It was a shrill, cringe-worthy giggle; one that was heard too often by someone passing throughout the dirty, exterior halls of Arkham Asylum. And while Crane laughed at whatever Crane was laughing at, Bruce noticed just how (even more) gaunt and hunched-over his adversary had become over the past couple of months. He made a quick mental note to remind the doctors to look into this possibly anorexic behavior (something he had actually always wondered about whenever he encountered Jonathan and his short, feeble appearance; which was somehow always more pronounceable after one of his many hiatuses from raining down terror on the head of Bruce's city).

The giggle reached earnest, burst into full, stomach-clapping cackling, and then tapered off. Crane looked back up, smiled roundly, and wheezed. Bruce glared.

"And why is that, little Bat?" he asked, still laughing. "Because of Hatter? Hahahaha! Oh stop, you're going to make me cry," he said and wiped at his eyes. Bruce tightened his fists.

"You see," Crane continued, not noticing, "I'm only interested in what makes that confused little leprechaun tick. His _fears_ , mind you. And in the meantime, he can have his fun. I'll get out soon and then . . ." Crane leaned forward, grinned a confident grin, and said: "So will I."

"No, you won't."

He was yanked by the collar then and a soft grunt escaped his mouth. Bruce had had enough of this.

"I'm not playing games here, Crane," he said, almost growling, "You know how Tetch thinks and what he'll do next."

"I-"

"No. You. Do." Bruce said slowly, deliberately. "I don't care about the specifics. I don't _want to_ care. Because all I need to know is the fact that you can help me **catch** him. And that _is_ what you're going to do."

Crane pulled back, his feet dangling off the ground, trying to get some slack back on his shirt. It didn't work.

So he grunted again and said, "And how are you so sure about that?"

Bruce smirked that devious smirk of his. "Oh I don't know. Special privileges in the rec room? Early parole?" He got in close and paused, his smirk growing bigger, as if he had just heard some dirty little secret about a girl in the boy's locker room.

"Because you want to?"

"What?"

Bruce let him go, and Crane flopped back down into his seat, which skidded back against the wall.

"If I'm wrong, don't follow me. Your choice."

And then Bruce left, door open, Cash smirking on the other side of the room, arms crossed as he stood there in the hallway. Staring at Crane and chuckling, knowing his decision before he did.

* * *

Now Crane had scoffed and thought that the whole thing was ludicrous–and that maybe the Bat had inhaled a little too much fear gas during their last little rendezvous–but he still followed and went along with the Batman's plan for the night anyway. Out of boredom, curiosity, and that smidgen of hope inside him that longed for future changes concerning his current living situation (he still wasn't given access to the new computers like the other patients, and that set him off horribly). But not because of Jervis.

No, Professor Jonathan Crane never has had, will never _have,_ and will never _want_ any friends. He only wants horror for all of this around him and nothing more.

But maybe, just maybe, the very thing that terrifies _him_ , even a superior, evolved man like himself, more than anything, is the thought of spending the rest of his life telling himself that.

Just maybe.


	5. Chapter 5 A Road Trip

"You're must be scared, Bat."

Crane's harsh, analytical voice was lost in the jingle of keys that led their way out of the building; whistling like a rusted, tired flute in the cold, unforgiving air.

The easy part was procuring Jonathan's temporary furlough papers to get him out on a single-night basis. Getting the inmate to actually comply? The hard part. And catching Jervis before the night was through? Damn near impossible. Especially since Bruce would have to deal with Crane's lectures and highly opinionated, thinly veiled insults all throughout the night. But it was small price to pay, he supposed.

"I can see it now in you timid little eyes," he said and laughed and the laugh echoed about the tall, giant canopies above. "To come to me? Oh, you must be so very desperate and scared and-"

"Shut up Crane. Now."

The damp patch of grass buckled softly under their feet as they walked to the car; that cold air still piercing at Crane and his skinny, bare forearms; bristling thin hairs to their straight-edges, and drifting ever so sensitively through the fibers of his sweatpants. And as he hopped onto the pavement and scurried down that stretch of walkway that sprung out from the front double-doors and wrapped itself into a circle of concrete near the one-lane logging road, he actually _wanted_ to be inside the Batmobile (and, yes, that thought sounded foreign and discordant to his own ears as well; he had only ever been inside that thing when he was a bloody, barley-senitent pulp after all).

But he soon found that the car was not only warm, but the seats were also both unbelievably durable and, at the same time, absolutely the most comfortable thing he had ever experienced; certainly more comfortable than his former accommodations; his bed was bumpy, uneven gravel in comparison. He sighed as the automatic belts buckled themselves in and then stifled another bitter or mordant sentence, sinking into the cushions without another peep. The engine reeved, a fresh burst of grey and red exploded from the rear of the car, and soon they were gone.

All that was left behind them now was the bight, shinny new Arkham Asylum, whose fancy, marble facade and clean, verdant gardens signaled that better days were about to come.

* * *

On their way down the wilderness that sliced its way out from the rows and rows of healthy early June foliage, for nearly 216 miles until it reached city (still barely enough to Gotham safe, Bruce thought grimly), Crane turned to the stern pile of anger and concentration on his left, and asked where they were going. He supposed that the destination had to be Mrs. Pleasance's household or new workplace quarters (and that maybe Jervis had finally found her after all these years of relentless searching), or perhaps the abduction site of his newest obsession, but all three of these guesses were wrong.

They were headed to Jervis's last known location: his old hideout in a storage facility behind a Sid Mashburn's. One of the reasons Bruce needed Crane's help tonight was for him to make sense of whatever Tetch left behind—so far, every time Bruce had got close to Hatter and took a step towards figuring out his next play, the subsequent trail Jervis had left behind amounted to zero evidence and zero promise. Bruce was, unfortunately, stumped. He needed someone who knew the signs even better than him, knew where Jervis would go next, and knew what he would do there.

And as much as Crane wasn't in the mood for deciphering someone's underwear or trash into a sort of vague clue (Jervis never was that subtle. Or, really, that _careful_ ) he went along with it anyway. Again. Because maybe he _was_ interested to see how this progressed and how Jervis would subsist under the combined might of both of them (that is, if what Batman said about his deteriorating mental state was actually true). Plus, he was finally warm. Tonight could be fun. Maybe.

He closed his eyes for some rest, leaned back, and at the same time, Harley opened the door to the warehouse on the loading pier across town and brought in the groceries. She undid her scarf and took off her sunglasses and laid them down on the nearest counter. She let her hair fall lightly against her shoulders and put the brown paper bundles of food and milk and toiletries beside her scarf and sunglasses on the counter. She turned.

Then she smiled.

"Hey puddin'," she said and kissed his pale cheek as tenderly as a housewife after a tedious day away from her husband.

"I'm back."

An inarticulate, animalistic growl sprung out of his mouth and he rubbed his face and crumpled the sheet in front of him. He was annoyed, already. This wasn't gonna be a good night.

For anyone.


	6. Chapter 6 Triggers

Tang of dead fish. Overhead lights cracking and popping and snapping current until settling, burning out more each minute.

Molding floorboards. Creaking, wooden beams and rafters, the second floor creaking in tandem at times. And then the present swish of waves moving against the sides of the building by way of the dock loosely supported on the waterbed beneath.

This was Joker's hideout. An old, abandoned, decaying warehouse previously rented out by a now-broke, tuna-canning company in Old Gotham. And although no more canned tuna was still being produced there, the smell of it never seemed to leave. In fact, neither did the sweet, refreshing aroma of sweat and work that always clung to the atmosphere as if it were on life-support.

The smell, the humidity, the constant sway of the warehouse . . . it all added to his frustration. He felt the steaming, skin-crawling fury of his tired, fed-up mind seep down from his brain and into his bones. Into his heart. Everything was an annoyance now. Everything drove him over the edge. Everything gnawed and relentlessly probed at the very fabric of his existence until he felt he would explode and unleash not only his anger, but the undefinable madness and mercilessness of life on all the creatures that foolishly wrapped themselves around their possessions in this vapid, disgusting world!

. . .

Harley seemed happy enough though.

* * *

"I did soooo good Mr. J," she continued and sat herself on his desk, on his work, "I got everything on the list!"

He sneered a bit and glanced up. "Good for you Harley-"

"I got peanut butter, and ketchup, and milk, and bread, and . . . well," she paused and put her finger on her chin in contemplation, "I didn't get exploding whipped cream, but you know what? I don't think they sell that there!"

The sheer, truthful incredulity of that statement made Joker grit his teeth even harder. He looked down at his work and clutched his hands into fists. Fudge, one of their more... _intellectually challenged_ henchmen, felt his eyes close together and salvia drip from his mouth in his growing lethargy, but then promptly stirred himself to wakefulness in his chair.

For the boss's sake.

Well, no, for his own. The boss hadn't told him to go to sleep yet.

Joker sighed. "That sucks, Harl, truly, but as you can see, I'm quite busy. So-"

"I even held the checkout girl at gunpoint," she kept on, unmindfully ignoring him. She shrugged.

"Yeah, I was like 'Yo bitch, where dat exploding whipped cream be?', but she still insisted that it didn't exist."

"Harley!" Joker exclaimed, but still relatively softly, somehow containing what little bit of composure was left within him. It was building up, slowly.

"I know, I know," Harley resumed obliviously, "It doesn't sound like how I usually handle things. But sometimes, I mean I just got to get all gangsta on dem hoes, you know Mr. J?"

He cursed her lowly, too lowly for her to hear over her own, chatty clamor, but Fudge heard it. Clearly and fully. And suddenly . . . he was very nervous. Nervous enough to get up, declare leave on account of guard duty, and get out of there.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, after Harley's entire, piece-by-piece recollection of her little shopping adventure, Joker was a mental, and physical, inch away from further maintaining his abusive reputation.

Some were quick. Over after a fast, painful, terrifying second. Some, few, were completely homicidal, bloody, and game-changing. Others were prosaic; plain and simple, only a few fists and then some slugs. And some were just for laughs and _both_ parties were actually able to experience the fun.

But, no matter what, the thing they all had in common . . . was that they all happened sooner or later.

* * *

Harley sauntered towards the fridge (all rusted and chipped away and dented and barley ventilated) and stocked it up with the appropriate groceries. The night faded into a sort of cobalt-ish husk outside the broken windows, the moon shining against the opaque blue like a dim nickel dropped into the base of a rippling water-fountain.

"Oh, and about the car," she started, her voicing faltering a bit, "I called Sherman. He said he should be able to find anotha'. I know you liked the old one though. . ."

She pursed her lips and looked down, acknowledging this sore spot. Joker breathed in patiently (or as patient as someone like him could be at this point).

"Damn, stupid Bat," she whispered and returned to packing the refrigerator.

He took another look down at his scratch paper, his half-baked plans, his ruined foil for the Batman, his own private humiliation and said "Tell him to go screw himself. I don't want another car. I just want _him_."

Harley glanced up and shook her head. She pondered something, head inside the less-than-cold pocket of the fridge, and then closed the door. Turning to him, she grinned and tried to wave off the tension.

"Well don't worry, Mr. J," she said, voice turned up to maximum carelessness, "Next time we go up against that big oaf, _I'll_ take care of the fighting part. He won't know what hit em'!" She leaned in, hand softly placed on the corner of her mouth, as if she were in strictest confidence, and whispered "I know how he thinks."

. . .

That's when Joker really growled.

"What?"

She nodded, still chirpy and, of course, oblivious. "Mmm-hmm. I've been doing some studying on him during our little romps. I've written down a whole list!"

"Of what?" he asked, cocking his head, smiling a fake, pained grimace, while he burned and screamed wildly inside.

"Of his gadgets, his tactics, you name it! It's not all complete yet, but if you'd think it'll help-"

She reached for her pocket, smile still painted brightly on her young, naive face, but Joker held out his hand, signaling for her to stop.

"No, no, dear," he said calmly, and then with unrestrained venom, " _I don't need it_."

Recognizing the hostility in his voice, Harley gulped, groped, and pursed her lips again, this time more tightly and anxiously. "K," she responded a tad uneasy, "Just thought it would help, puddin'."

"It wouldn't," he said, no longer looking down, now glaring right into her, right past her eyes and into her bruised, damaged, demented soul. "But I'll tell you what will. Come here."

She beamed widely, mistook his gentle tone for some awakening of arousal, and sashayed all the way back to his desk. Rolling her shoulders, and with a delightful, coquettish smirk, she offered him her hand.

He didn't take it.


	7. Chapter 7 Enter Tetch, Exist Fudge

She came out bruised–she was sure, almost immediately, right at the decisive point of impact, that she was bruised and that the bruise would hold for no less than about two weeks.

Dragging her body forward–not with pain, but with a low feeling in her gut–towards the long, sequential alignment of pilings near the edge of the wharf, Harley Quinn, feeling soft and broken and deprecatory, began to unload a fresh, bountiful fusillade of tears onto her palms, and tried her best not to fall crumbling down to the ground on her shaking knees. But the loosely supported, deconstructing pier on which she stood shifted violently and threw her down anyway. _Swish_.

Broken and humiliated, she continued crying like this until, finally, those tears tapered off into faint, bottomless sobs and sniffles (like they always do, without fail) and then she turned, stood, and hissed at herself; curses spilling out of her mouth in that thick Brooklyn accent, chockfull of venom, self-loathing, and the not-too-far-off linguistic vestiges of New York's Hudson Valley.

She steadied herself against the prickly, wooden pilings and thought about those words, _his_ words, that were spoken to her just a moment before, seconds after everything was great, and her Mr. J was proud of her (loved her, needed her) and the damn groceries were in the damn fridge and they were going to go to bed happy and satiated and without strife . . . . and then she breathed in and sighed and cried all over again.

And you wanna know why?

 _Because she could've done something, dammit._

It was her fault. It must be. And the worst part–the part that always somehow found a way into her subconsciousness and pounded her into a vaguely sentient puddle of self-awarness and disenchantment–was the simple fact that she could have worked around this. She could have prevented this feeling, this _strain_ , this palpable, sickening sense of tension and bitterness and hate that now bridged their relationship; no matter for how ephemeral and delicate that bridge really was.

She still could have fixed this.

 _If she only knew the signs._

But then something wonderful happened. Then the wind (the same wind that weighed heavy with the cling of sour, green liquid and decaying tuna and dirty sewer stench) suddenly felt refreshing and brushed against her skin with a kind of indescribable, uncanny comfort. And Harley, with a muffled but undeniably angry voice of reason barking away in her brain, seized her railing–the veins in her hand hardening with loathing–and realized something.

She realized that there _were_ no signs for which she should have read. Not with him. Sure, this time, he was already pissed off and waiting for an excuse to hit something (and she was always the excuse, wasn't she?), but there were also times, times bursting unwelcome but plentifully into her head at this moment, where he would just break, unprovoked. Times where he was actually happy, content, satisfied(!), and just needed an outlet for that happiness. As strange as it was, sometimes . . . he would just do it for fun and nothing else.

And that made Harley even angrier.

She breathed in again, her lungs heaving carefully up and down inside her body, her thoughts seeming to have cleared and brightened, like a pimple or wart or wrinkle that simply ceased to exist over a smooth, healthy dot of flesh underneath.

But . . . sadly, this wouldn't last. It was just another stage in the required process of her coping: Harley would, at first, feel low and casted out, like she wasn't worthy or up to his measure–like a failure, to be truthfully and prosaically blunt–and then, after the self-shaming, she would become consumed with rage and righteousness. She would feel under-appreciated and entitled and above the situation. She would feel her own person, no longer preoccupied in thoughts elected to her by him and him alone, but instead . . . with thoughts of her _own_ ordination; thoughts that allowed her to see the light at the end of tunnel and take steps towards it.

And then she would revert right back.

Then she would run and crawl right back to his feet, whether he offered them or not. But not out of weakness per se, but out of fear. Yes, it obviously was a matter of love and loneliness and a looming rejection from the outside world (fear of whatever she would become without his warming, accepting presence; something worse, she feared; something bloody and confused and monstrous), but also out of . . . of the fear that, if she followed that light at the end of the tunnel and escaped the darkness somehow, he would find her.

He would find her and make sure she could never get away again.

Yes, she would always think about this, consider this, and it would always mock her silently, as if she was just another punchline to some cruel joke. It would always gnaw at her and, oddly enough, remind her of religion. Something necessary, something vital, something that anchors you down, and something that's also born out of the two most primitive, timeless concepts: love _and_ fear. Or maybe it was just _one_ of those. At any rate, she would still always love-

Before Harley could finish that part of her process, she turned and saw Fudge walk up to her.

* * *

She grimaced.

"What are you looking at?"

Fudge started back. "N-nothing, I swear!"

"What is it?" Harley probed harshly, throwing her sunlight-colored hair to the wind with a cursory fling. She snuffled and patted her eyes and then advanced him, getting in his space, pointing an erected, angry finger to his gaping face. "You think I'm some flop now, huh?" she asked starchily, "Some doormat?"

"N-no!" Fudge exclaimed, made a wide warding-off gesture as if he were caught in a pair of dual headlights, and backed up some more.

Harley glared, unfazed. "Yeah? Well, I'll ya mistah," she continued, her voice stiff and steady, if not a bit cracked and teary from before. "You better get moving if that's what you think. Cause I'm really, really not in the mood to stand here and listen to the hired help start making accusations about me. . . . Or start thinking he's better than me because he never gets tossed around by the boss."

Fudge's eyes bulged. He gulped, nodded. "I . . . I don't. Honest! I was just coming to tell you about the boa-"

"Ya know what?" she said and cocked her head to the side, gauging the sweaty, heavy heap of a man in front of her. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't just shoot you right here, right in the noggin'?"

Fudge got really nervous now. He straightened, gulped again, groped for the obvious answer that was unfortunately somewhere lodged down his swollen throat that stood frozen with intimidation, and before he could reply and warn her about that motor-boat that was speedily breaking water, approaching their hide-out more each second, a hot, silent splash of crimson shot across Harley's face.

* * *

Looking down the hole that darted through Fudge's right temple–and, like as not, out his left–as his body lay lifeless and prostrate on the swaying wharf before her, Harley reared back, eyes alive with surprise and shock, and pondered if she was indeed magic or not. After all, she had thought about it . . . and then it had happened. That meant something, right?

She wiped the spray of blood off her chin and around her eyes with her rim of her sleeve, studied the hole with another quick, cautious glance, and then deduced that the more likely conclusion, the one that really made sense, within the confines of reality, was that she has actually God incarnate all along.

And as she marveled dramatically at her hands, half expecting to be levitated upwards by way of some inarticulate, ethereal beam of holy light, Jervis climbed unto the wharf, adjusted his bow-tie, promptly tucked the 9mm into his waistband, and smiled.

He walked closer, with a card rolling about his knuckles.

"Greetings, my friend," he said.


	8. Chapter 8 A New Flirtation

It's funny how things work themselves out; how a man can slink away into a well oiled stupor and drift peacefully into a cold, snoreless sleep, his mouth salivating on his work and his body rested limply and arched along the contour of his chair. How a small, tungsten filament in the light bulb above him can suddenly snapped and crumpled up on itself, throwing the whole room into a deep, hollow pit of black; casting that man in nothing more than stagnate shadows devoid of any light or sense of fulfillment. And how knee-slapping hilarious it is that these two events can happen almost simultaneously, and in concurrence to a rather oddly ambitious friend . . . coming to visit.

Joker was dead to the world and the only two people still alive during the cold, still night were Harley Quinn and this ferret-faced, whiskered stranger in front of her, who almost seemed to bear a passing resemblance to her old acquaintance Jervis Tetch.

 _But Jervis never looked this hard up. He always took care of himself better than any of us!_

So it must be a stranger—no way it was the aseptically dapper and absurdly togged Jervis Tetch she knew, _no way._ This was clearly some homeless imposter, some tacky phony, some fanatic, and, moreover, someone who had just interceded on her behalf and disposed of one of the nosiest henchmen she had ever met. So who was it? Her brain groped for answers as Jervis, the one and only, cocked his head to the side and frowned at his new Alice.

"Harley?" he asked, feeling an uncomfortable laugh bubble up inside his throat and escape into the night air, "Don't you recognize me?"

She squinted and leaned towards him, trying to place this face with a name.

But she couldn't.

 _No way._

"Jervey?" she finally spoke, "Is that you?"

He grinned gently, creepily, his lips worms sliding across the soil. "Why of course, dear," he said, responding just as gently as he wore his smile and tapped the rim of his hat, "Who else do you know wears such frabjous headgear?"

Harley shifted her weight. "Huh," she whispered and then smirked the smirk of a person who had just found their best friend renewing some disgusting habit, in spite of their earlier success. "You look like shit," she said candidly and her hands gripped her hips in motherly reproach.

Hatter laughed a little too loudly and it echoed into the clouds. He leaned back, his hands going up to his breast pocket, and nodded his head again. Somewhere off in the near distance, a motor boat idled shrilly against the water, ripples slowly crimping out from its bottom, and then stalled.

Jervis stopped laughing as soon as it did.

"Ah, yes, I've always loved your wit," he said, though there was nothing remotely witty in her comment. "It never ceases to kill."

"Speaking of 'kill'," Harley said and gestured towards Fudge's body, the head of which was now immersed in an increasingly voluminous puddle of red fluid beside them. "Did ya really have to off the guy to state ya welcome? Mr. J is gonna be sooo pissed."

Hatter studied her sullen expression at the drop of his name, and ran his eyes along her lips; there was a cut on the upper left crevice, a small one, but still fresh, still trickling down slowly into her mouth. She wiped at it absently, but he saw. And suddenly his tired, glazed-over mind's eye drudged up an image of young Alice, drowning in a sea of her own tears.

"A gentleman should never hit a lady," he said abruptly and Harley snapped her head around so fast it seemed her neck would simply crack and tilt listlessly away along with the velocity of the turn. With equal parts anger and equal parts incredulity, she shot him a burning, defensive look and measured him up and down with her eyes.

"What did you just say?" she asked.

Hatter took a step closer and smiled that gentle, milk-like smile again. And as he did, Harley, in spite of herself, saw just how broken his face had become. There were blemishes spotted here and there and a peeling Band-Aid with an oozing yellow end hanging off his brow and large bristles of hair seeping down from the edges of his hat and forming crude mutton-chops on his jawline. And as he smiled, she noticed the chapped lips and the yellow, slanting teeth, and his breath, which hung poignantly with the slightly floral, earthy smell of black tea mixed with the post-bender, phenolic hint of whiskey.

"You're rattled," he said, "I can tell. And he's the one who rattled you, right?"

Harley gritted her teeth.

"Yeah," he continued, sounding less and less like his old self, "I know. It's hard. Being in love with something that isn't real; loving it so much when in fact it's nothing more but mere gossamer; this-this delicate, weak little thing you spin into something bigger in your head." He sighed, looked around the wharf, smiled, shrugged, and then looked back at her. "It's dangerous, love is. Like being stuck in the breakdown lane and your sensible only way out is to steer head-first into the oncoming traffic."

Harley seized back. Jervis noticed and slid the card in his palm up and in-between the web of his index finger and his middle one; a weird, fatalistic expression sweeping over his face. He stared at her and his smile turned into that of a fleeting, vulnerable thin line.

"It's also how you get bruised."

For a moment, Harley's eyes burned into him, suddenly consumed with this sour mixture of fury and grief; a newfound hatred for this man who was once her friend, once so clean and sober as well.

But then she sighed, the emotion was dispelled, and she dropped her gaze.

"He loves me, Jervey" she began lowly, "I know he does. It's not some fantasy, ok?"

"Ok."

"He just . . . he-he . . . it's complicated."

"Such is love."

"And I honestly think that . . . that one day . . ." she trailed off and felt the hot rush of tears burrow under her lids, "That one day he'll quit. He'll quit it all. _All of it_."

"Oh but he won't quit, my darling," Jervis pried, "Never. Trust me, I know, I have a rather large frame of reference. A man like him, he'll will never quit hurting people, even long after it has stopped being fun. Then he'll just do out of bitterness! Out of resentment. And he _will_ resent you one day, Harley."

He came closer and brushed his hand down her arm. "Maybe it's already happened," he said.

She suddenly started backwards, her face hardening again. His hand fell into the wind. She crossed her chest with her arms.

"What do you want, Jervis?"

"I have a job for you," he answered, his eyes a gray, inscrutable color.

Harley felt herself doubling back on her earlier hunch that this person wasn't Jervis at all. Not at all. "Does that job involve the card you're trying to hide in your hand?" she asked impatiently, directing her eyes to his right.

Jervis's brows rose for a moment—what a keen eye this Alice had, no?—and then resigned into expressionlessness.

"No," he said, "That's for someone else. I was hoping you would comply quite hastily."

"And why would you imply such a thing?" she asked, her own brows rising, arms tightening in their lock that squeezed and shifted against her ribs. "What even is this job you have for me? Another heist? Some undercover operation?"

"Oh, the way you rhapsodize about him!," he said, ignoring her questions altogether, but still somehow, unbeknownst to her, about to answer them, "even though you know what he's done to all those poor men, women, and children."

"Jervis-"

"Even after everything he's done to _you_. He's not" — and here his voice seemed to stiffen and grow into a graver shade of seriousness — "He's not a gentleman at all. Not in the slightest."

"Please, stop," Harley said, that tight lock around her body softening into something more like a hug.

"He doesn't deserve you."

"Stop . . ." she muttered weakly, her voice croaking.

"Not a pretty little thing like you."

For a long time—too long—neither of them spoke, and Harley only looked down at the planks below, crooked slits of blue running down their chipped and wooden faces. Finally, she sucked in a shallow breath and looked up with big, fragile, diamond gem eyes.

"You . . . you think I'm pretty?" she asked.

And Jervis, smiling again, smiling that cool, serene, whiff-of-pie smile, as if he had all parts greased and ready to run, as if he had everything right under his fingertips, slowly pushed the card back down his pant pocket—feeling as if he didn't need it anymore—and offered her his hand.

She took it, and he squeezed reassurance into her palm.

"I think you're beautiful," he said.

It's funny how things work themselves out.


	9. Chapter 9 The Build-Up

The light was slight, yes, and the ray of it that _did_ happen to fall through the slightly slid-open manhole cover and onto the watch in his hand was fuzzy and of the muted gray-blue hue of a late rainy afternoon… but Croc was sure of what the watch read, all the same.

And despite the calm surety of his voice when he warned his men what would happen to them if they didn't get back here by this time, with his new meal intact and ready to be thrown down here, into this sewer, so he could finally sink his teeth into warm meat again… despite how utterly blasé and casual he had sounded when he told them what he'd do to them if they didn't show up by now… he was mad.

Oh boy, yes, he was very, very mad about this.

He had told them, those two pig shits, with no implicitly whatsoever, that if they decided to up and ditch him here, if they decided to get smart and scurry away into the sunset without him, or if, somehow, they _still_ couldn't find any food within all the hours he had granted them to find something at least _semi_ -fresh… well, then, he would just crawl right back up to the surface world out there, track down their scent, the scent they would've left all over everything in the park, and find them, wherever they'd be holding up.

Then, he had told them, he would eat them.

Snatch them up and rip them apart and grind them up in his teeth until they were nothing _but_ meat.

Because he was still their boss, goddamn it, still their head honcho, still their obligation-to-obey, even if they weren't getting any dough, even if the whole operation had been busted beyond repair, and they couldn't just leave him high and dry like this—no, there'd be consequences to pay for something like that.

And besides, it didn't make any difference to him _who_ he ate, or how much fear soiled their meat, or any of that.

No, not anymore.

He had told them that he was just hungry, and hungry enough to eat just about anything… or anyone.

"You two look just as plump and tasty to me as a platter of ribeye steak," he had said, his gurgly voice echoing off the running concrete walls of the sewer. They had both googled at him at that, with wide, deer-eyes. "Now, you've got some time to change that," he continued, "to save yourselves, to feed the beast before he feeds himself, and you've got a long time, too… but if you screw up… oh-ho…" He had looked at one of them then, the one with the fat face and slightly wattled neck—he couldn't remember any of their names, or how component they were compared with one another, but how much meat you had on your bones Waylon Jones never forgot.

"I wonder how long _you'll_ last, boy. Before you get all cold and doughy, of course."

As he dropped the watch now—it made a hollow _plink!_ as it hit the sewer water below—and started towards the ladder lining the sewer wall, Croc wished that what he had said to them had been a lie—a scare tactic and nothing else. Whether he'd make good on his promise to rip those two beetle-brains into strips and slabs was one thing; the burning, strangled-sounding rumble-tumble of his stomach was another. The truth was, he'd been hungry enough to eat just about anything for a whole week now. The truth was, the cold, saturated remains, the _leftovers_ , of all his victims down here with him in the foul damp dark were not enough; they'd be good for mere minutes before the hunger got its mercilessly sharp hooks inside him again, and through the very scales on his stomach, it seemed. The truth was, even if he could manage to hold his gorge against the slimy snail-taste of the rotten flesh of those leftovers, he'd moan soon after he ate, and begin to throw up anyway.

The truth was, the miserable truth of the thing was, that the only thing that had really stopped him from grabbing fat boy by his collar and yanking him down here into the heavy, rancid stench was the fact that—and knowledge of the fact that—he was completely and utterly dependent on them as his one and only meal-ticket. Without them, without them out there, scouting the landscape for food, he'd die down here, in the damp black, in the foul dark, in the filthy waters in which, every now and then, something clumpy and mushy slushed back against and between his legs, before seeming to dissolve completely into nothing.

That bothered him, too.

He didn't _want_ it to bother him, he would never say that it did bother him but goddamn if it didn't bother him like no other, anyway.

"I ain't dying like this," he growled to himself as he climbed the sewer's ladder towards the carefully and subtly slid-back manhole cover at the top. "I just ain't."

Then he stopped, hallway up. He cocked head, hearing it, startled by it, then realizing it.

"What in the…"

Out there, somewhere on the beaten-and-kicked-away path of the biking trail of Robinson Park, a girl was laughing. Shoes—black little ballet flats—were all he could see of this girl, but he didn't need to see anymore to know who the girl _was_.

The laugh was enough.

And one of the dipshits was there, too.

And one of the dipshits was whispering frantically under his breath, "Oh God no, please don't shoot me, please don't shoot me, I'll-I'll do anything, anything at all, just name it, _please_."


End file.
